Almost certainly not. Wilson only caught 4 games last year, so he won't begin the year with eligibility in most leagues. And the word out of Pittsburgh on this trade is that the Pirates would look to pick up a starting catcher to go with Cota and JR House.

That is correct. Humberto Cota and JR House would split catching duties for the Bucs. But I don't understand how the A's can afford Kendall. He fits the Moneyball mold perfectly, except for his hugs contract.

Tony Clark is my son wrote:But I don't understand how the A's can afford Kendall. He fits the Moneyball mold perfectly, except for his hugs contract.

I guess they're looking to make a run in 2005. And I don't know the details of the trade but the Bucs must be eating a chunk of Kendall's salary. They've been trying to trade him since the day after he signed on the dotted line it seems, so for a team like Oakland to get him they must be gettig a huge discount. Although getting rid of Rhodes and Redman should drop their team ERA about 2 runs so maybe that's all the compensation they need

Tony Clark is my son wrote:But I don't understand how the A's can afford Kendall. He fits the Moneyball mold perfectly, except for his hugs contract.

I guess they're looking to make a run in 2005. And I don't know the details of the trade but the Bucs must be eating a chunk of Kendall's salary. They've been trying to trade him since the day after he signed on the dotted line it seems, so for a team like Oakland to get him they must be gettig a huge discount. Although getting rid of Rhodes and Redman should drop their team ERA about 2 runs so maybe that's all the compensation they need

Well, geetign rid of the $14.2 million they are owed on their contracts is also a benefit. The net financial cost to the A's is, at most, $20 million over three years, and will actually be less since the Pirates are going to pick up some of this.

Top rank catchers are getting 6-7 million per year.
On net, that's what the A's are paying for Kendall.

True but I don't think Kendall is in Varitek/Pudge's league. And while Kendall might be worth $6M on the open market, the A's aren't a team that would pay that much for a catcher. They might be getting a fair price in the end, but spending that much of their budget on a catcher doesn't seem like something they'd usually do.

I guess it depends how much Pittsburgh eats. Maybe spending $15M over 3 years for Kendall would be good.

And the net cost to them isn't really a good indication of what they're spending. They could probably get rid of Rhodes' contract by dealing him to the Yankees or another team that wants a lefty reliever without taking on the burden of a huge contract like Kendall's. Overall this doesn't seem like a good deal for them.... Beane is lacking IMO. Last year he gets Rhodes, now he's going after Kendall He should have stuck to his vaule players instead of paying too much for players who have a reputation. Leave that to the Yankees.

LBJackal wrote:True but I don't think Kendall is in Varitek/Pudge's league. And while Kendall might be worth $6M on the open market, the A's aren't a team that would pay that much for a catcher. They might be getting a fair price in the end, but spending that much of their budget on a catcher doesn't seem like something they'd usually do.

I guess it depends how much Pittsburgh eats. Maybe spending $15M over 3 years for Kendall would be good.

And the net cost to them isn't really a good indication of what they're spending. They could probably get rid of Rhodes' contract by dealing him to the Yankees or another team that wants a lefty reliever without taking on the burden of a huge contract like Kendall's. Overall this doesn't seem like a good deal for them.... Beane is lacking IMO. Last year he gets Rhodes, now he's going after Kendall He should have stuck to his vaule players instead of paying too much for players who have a reputation. Leave that to the Yankees.

Kendall is definitely Varitek's and Posada's equal. He's basically the same player as those two based on VORP over the last two years (OPS tends to undervalue Kendall) and he's two years younger than 'tek and 3 years younger than Posada. Only Javy and Pudge had higher VORPs over the past two years.

Sure, he could have dumped contracts to save money, but that just saves money. It doesn't improve the team. In this move, Beane increases his costs but also makes a significant improvement in his team at one of the toughest positions to find offense. At worst, Beane might have overpaid a little.

Comparing Kendall to other catchers, whether it is in statistics or salary, is really hard. I can't think of another single catcher where a team would consider batting them leadoff. Kendall hits over .300, but is a heavy singles hitter, whereas most other catchers don't do much hitting at all, and if they do they hit a handful home runs.

This makes comparing Kendall to others in salary just as hard. He gets $10 million+, which is without question being overpaid, but is he worth equal money to a Posada or Varitek? The best I can come up with is relating Juan Pierre's salary to that of other big name outfielders, because Kendall is the Juan Pierre of catchers.

Tony Clark is my son wrote:Comparing Kendall to other catchers, whether it is in statistics or salary, is really hard. I can't think of another single catcher where a team would consider batting them leadoff. Kendall hits over .300, but is a heavy singles hitter, whereas most other catchers don't do much hitting at all, and if they do they hit a handful home runs.

This makes comparing Kendall to others in salary just as hard. He gets $10 million+, which is without question being overpaid, but is he worth equal money to a Posada or Varitek? The best I can come up with is relating Juan Pierre's salary to that of other big name outfielders, because Kendall is the Juan Pierre of catchers.

It's not really that hard once you use a measure that summarizes the effects of a player on truns or wins. A measure like VORP (value over replacement player) quantifies each player's contributions in terms of the runs they contribute above what your basic AAAA player could provide. For example, last year Pudge contributed about 65 runs, while Kendall and Veritek were around 48 runs.

Another commonly used measure is win shares, which measures each player's contributions in terms of wins. Last year Kendall led all catchers, with 25 win shares.

So, there's always a little variation, but by almost every good measure that summarizes performance, Kendall ranks in the top 5 catchers. He doesn't get the props because he doesn't hit the homers. But he is a consistent .400 OBP, and that's the single most important skill in baseball. And, unlike power, it generally does not fade with age.

VORP is far from being an end-all metric. You can't prove that any player is better than another based soley on VORP.

I do agree that OPS shows its flaws when you compare a player like Kendall because it favors sluggers and ignores base-stealing (although that probably helped him this year since he was thrown out almost as many times as he stole a base).

I think Total Average is a better overall indicator than OPS. I also posted the Equivalent Average numbers from BP. Kendall is not as good offensively as you're suggesting. At least not last year.